The cover, and gratitude

By: PAUL JACKSON
August 26, 2008

A more personal post here than usual; but after more than three weeks of long, sleepless nights, our first issue of HW Magazine is at the press tonight and will be rolling off presses later this week. Below you can snag a look at the cover, click for a larger version:

This has been a ton of work for a core group of people, and I’m very proud and thankful to know of all of them. That includes writers like Felix Salmon at Market Movers who helped contribute a feature on commodities, and Darrell Delamaide, probably best known these days for his work at MarketWatch — who researched and wrote our cover story on hedge funds flowing into the distressed mortgage space, and what strategies they see shaping up over the next 24 months. And there’s a pretty large group of other writers who were willing to take on some off-beat but interesting (I hope) assignments, too, all of whom wrote stories that nailed the editorial vision for this magazine.

It also includes Scott Cullins at Canyon Media, whose near-Herculean effort to produce a world-class magazine in less time than most newsweeklies will not soon be forgotten; same goes for Pam Brown at Brown Ink, whose production skills and ability to make printers’ schedules bend in completely unnatural ways is a big reason this magazine is seeing the light of day.

And it includes numerous sources from all sides of this industry, too, that were kind enough to speak with us for stories, as well those forward-thinking companies that have been so unbelievably willing to provide us with unfettered access to their data for use in the magazine. Corporate willingness to participate in our effort to generate an independent source of industry information underscores the real value of launching into a publication like this; for readers and the companies involved, alike.

And, of course, HW’s very own deserve strong kudos here as well: Richard Bitner, who helped make sure this first issue will be well-received by the industry, and Greg Petersen, our creative director who took it upon himself to dress up our data. There’s a reason so few publications do custom charts and graphs, BTW — they’re a real pain to create. Yet we’ve put more than 30 of them into the first issue of the magazine.

At any rate, the first issue will be hitting the mail in the next week (delivered a week after that), for those that have already subscribed. If you haven’t yet, please consider it — I think you’ll want to be a part of what I’m confident will become industry history.

And, as advance notice for those who in particular have wanted to have a chance to say hello as this site has grown from a small blog to an industry resource; we’ll be exhibiting at the upcoming MBA annual convention in October, and I’ll be spending a good amount of time in our booth. If you’ll be headed to this year’s event, I’d be honored to meet those that read us online (and in print, too).

Thanks, as always, for all of your support over the past year and a half.